


Fading Memories

by DarkAbyss



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Blood and Injury, Character Study, Flashbacks, Gen, I'm Bad At Summaries, Introspection, Memories, Mild Gore, One Shot, This got more DEEP than I meant for it to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:01:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24668809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkAbyss/pseuds/DarkAbyss
Summary: Zim experience an oddly vivid flashback during one of his fights with Dib and the aftermath brings some weird, uncomfortable thoughts.
Relationships: Dib & Zim (Invader Zim), The Almighty Tallest & Zim
Comments: 11
Kudos: 62





	Fading Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone!
> 
> It’s been a while since I’ve written something for this fandom...and I haven’t been writing much in general lately. However, when I found the draft of this small fic in my computer, I felt sort of compelled to finish it. I’m trying to go back working on my long fic and this could be a start!
> 
> I’m pretty sure that it had started as an excuse to write something vaguely gory, but I ended up turning it into something else. I really can't keep the introspection out of the stuff I write xD
> 
> It’s a stand alone, but I can see it being set a few months before the beginning of [Broken Kalopsìa](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13179276/chapters/30144330) too (for whoever is familiar with that work of mine).
> 
> Feedback is appreciated and always welcome!

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

The sound of each drop echoed in the silence that reined over the mostly destroyed building, slow in its coming as it was piercing when the liquid finally touched the metal floor, after yet another bite of eternity. The air smelled acridly _sugary_ and the dead quiet that stepped in between each drop heaved the atmosphere, making it even more smothering.

Nothing moved, aside from the few sparks of electricity that still raised from the smashed computer consoles and the burnt pieces of equipment. Nothing was _alive_ among the countless bodies scattered around, on the ground, hanging from the walls, hunched over piles of metal scraps. Nothing but one.

The figure lay on the floor, chest rising and falling rapidly, _too_ rapidly, and pumping sticky blood out of the open gap that had been opened in the middle of his abdomen. His uniform was in shreds, darkened in the spots where the lasers had grazed it, and so was his flesh, pink lymph sweating out freely from the several small cuts and bruised that covered his once unscarred green skin. All those marks would have disappeared eventually, if he had made it out alive, healed by the device that allowed his whole being to exist, the one that was currently buzzing horribly from underneath the arch of his broken spine.

Pain was something he was used to. In a sense, at least. He had experienced it in so many occasions, and at times it had been so intense that had caused his insides to contort, making him want to tear them out, just to make it stop. And he would have done exactly that, in that very moment. He would have stuck his hands inside the hole in his torso and pulled the organs out from where they were already peeking and bleeding, because the agony was becoming _unbearable_. He would have done it, if his arms, or even just his PAK limbs, because those would have sufficed too, had been functional. However, much to his own dismay, almost every bone in his body had been broken and he had been left there, paralysed, forced to smell his own fresh blood and the already rotting one of the corpses around him, wishing that he could have squeezed his spooch till it had been reduced to nothing but a shapeless, slimy mass, and been _done_ with everything.

The faintest, trembling groan escaped his dry mouth. There was a voice in his head telling him that he should have been _grateful_ to be alive, considering how badly that fight had gone, but he couldn’t bring himself to listen to it yet. It was hard to believe in the blessing of survival when all you could feel was an intolerable agony and an oppressive sense of nausea. It was hard to focus on the bright sides, when you had been dumped in complete darkness, because one of your eyes was melted and the other had been popped out by an explosion.

His mind briefly wandered backwards. He wasn’t sure of when things had taken the wrong turn. That mission should have been a simple one. With a few risks, but still easy enough. Break in, kill the guards, steal the technology, get out. Maybe drag back a few prisoners who could have told them how to properly make use of said tech. It was the reason why the team had been mostly composed by recruits in-training and led by a couple of their instructors. No need to dispatch a real troop for such a basic job.

With great effort, which also caused more blood spurt out of the wound on his chest as his whole body tensed for the briefest moment, he focused on the fingers of one of his hands. A spark of hopeful satisfaction lit up inside him when he felt the joints twitching in a small movement. He was healing, even if very, _very_ slowly. It would have taken hours, if now a whole day, for his PAK to repair all the damage and make him perfectly functional again, but soon enough he should have been able to at least get back on his feet and walk out of there. In the meantime, all he would have to do would have been to just lie there and wait. If some enemy had come in, looking for survivors, he would have held his breath. He should have been able to look as dead as everyone else in his current state. Or at least he hoped so.

His not broken antenna twitched slightly at the idea of being found alive, failing to convey the real amount of fear and anxiety that the thought brought him.

At first, the mission had truly seemed as easy as it should have been. few of them had been left outside the laboratory, on watch, while the rest had headed broken into the laboratory after having cracked the security codes. Once inside, they hadn’t run into a single soul. Not a guard, not a scientist, not even a service drone. It should have seemed weird, it should have alarmed them, but no one had made a comment on the fact. He, personally, had just been glad that everything was going so smoothly because, while he had volunteered to be assigned on the scouting team, he had quickly started to regret his zeal.

The lack of sentient being hadn’t been the only thing that had felt off with the laboratory. The whole place had seemed to scream “creepy” and “danger”. The lights were dim and they spread odd shadows in every corner of the bow-shaped corridors. The air tasted of pungent antiseptic. The silence had been complete, so much that the light sound of their steps had cause his antennae to ache. There had been something in the atmosphere that had made them all jittery and so not having to worry about fighting off guards and getting rid of witnesses had seemed a good thing. At least until they had stepped in the room where, according to their intel, the devices they needed to retrieve should have been store.

It had been than that everything had irremediably gone downhill.

He cringed slightly at the memory of how loud and the alarm had been. It had started to blare as soon as the whole team had stepped inside the large room and heavy metal walls had fallen down, blocking all the exits, before anyone could have had the time to do or say anything. They had attempted to cut through the thick barriers that were blocking their escape routes, but it had been useless. Whoever had build the security system had made sure that evading it would have been hard, even for such an advanced race as theirs.

Then the robots had come. They had emerged from holes that had opened in the floor, shiny, sturdy and freakishly _tall_ , violet laser eyes glowing with openly murderous intentions. And the _weapons_ they carried, clasped in their plier-like hands and incorporated in their shiny metal shells. One look at them and he had understood that they wouldn’t have made it out alive.

What had followed had been pure chaos. Lasers rays, explosions, flying pieces of metal and flesh, fire, blood spurts. Screeches and screams. Rage, fear, despair. _Pain_.

When he had managed to implode the last robot, blowing himself up in the process, it had taken him a long time to realise that it was over. To realise that he was still alive. His mind had been a mess, with his damaged PAK sending random energy waves, trying to keep his vitals above the minimal levels, and he had been so deeply in shock that he hadn’t felt anything at all. Not a physical sensation, not an emotion. Everything had been blank and still and, had he been able to think, he would have wondered if he had _died_.

Then reality had come crushing down on him, after an undefined amount of time, and that gut-wrecking agony with it, leaving him where he was now, helpless and drowning in his own blood.

A weak coughing sound escaped his throat and he gritted his pinkish teeth as he tried to move his hand again. This time his fingers flexed, but the shot of hot pain that was sent along his arm as a reaction to the tension in his damaged tendons killed any joy he might have felt for the small achievement. Maybe it was a bit too soon to coax his organic body into moving. It was getting clearer and clearer that every attempt at it would have turned against him. Better to change strategy.

He squeezed his blind eyes shut in concentration, noticing distractedly how the eyelid of the missing one seemed to fall inside his empty orb. What an unpleasant sensation. A small electric shock ran along his whole body, causing his limp body to shake, but then he heard a low hiss coming from behind his back as two spider legs emerged, even if with difficulty.

His PAK buzzed loudly, in distress, but the metal limbs moved, jerkily, planting themselves on the floor, managing to push him in a seated position. That move, however, turned out to have been the wrong one once again because, as soon as his back was vertical, something moved inside his chest, gifting him with a renewed shot of agony and one of the nastiest sensations he had ever experienced.

His still half-broken arm uncoordinatedly shot up, pressing itself and the limp wrist attached to it against his abdomen, just in time to prevent his organs to pour out of the gaping hole set in the middle of it. One of his claws accidentally slipped inside the opening, pressing against the slippery surface of his pulsing insides and making him experience the umpteenth wave of nausea.

A sound that was half way between a helpless groan and an irritated scoff left his lips. Not his most brilliant idea, perhaps. But at least that way he could take a proper look around.

Slowly, he lifted his eyelids again, the still present magenta orb offering him a very blurred image of his surroundings. The images were too unfocused to allow him to distinguish the details, but he managed to recognise the colours and some shapes. After a few more moments of struggle, he managed to get a third spider leg out and used it to turn his head around, to be able to survey the whole room. His PAK seemed to have concentrated its healing action on the remaining eye, because his sight quickly got clearer and clearer, until he could finally see again, even if not perfectly. It didn’t matter. All he cared about was getting a better understanding of his situation and find out if he could manage to get out of that hideous place.

The first thing that caught his attention was the hole that had been blasted in one of the metal barriers that had blocked the exits, effectively creating an escaping route he could have used as soon as he could have moved without dropping his spooch on the floor in the process. While he was still he could manage to exert enough pressure to keep his insides where they belonged, but he wasn’t sure that he could have done the same, once he had tried to walk.

He lowered his gaze down on himself, on the gap in his chest. It was pretty large, spreading from the end of his ribcage almost to the line of his hips. The blood coming out of his had already soaked the lower part of his uniform and his sleeve and he could see the organs convulsing in a way that just didn’t look _right_. There were a few tears in them too and a metal splinter planted in the upper part of one of the canals, which had to be the cause of the intense jolts of pain he felt every time his insides contracted. He was no medic, but all Irkens were taught some basic notions of biology and medicine. Moreover, you didn’t need to have paid attention to those lessons to know that things weren’t looking good for him. At all.

He used his PAK leg to move his head up again and scan the rest of the room. The floor was littered with metal, coming both from the destroyed robots and the smashed lab equipment, but what stood out the most were the corpses of his fellow soldiers. A few of them were still mostly intact and lay on the ground in unnatural positions or _impaled_ on the walls. Most of them had holes in their bodies, which ran from side to side, and missing limbs. Others had been reduced to unrecognisable masses of organic substance. Their blood and mashed organs were spread on the once pristine floor, making it look like a bad, distasteful piece of art created by a crazy blob during a fit.

The knowledge that he had almost ended up like that too made his head spin and his sight blurred. He was on the verge of blacking out again. His energies were slowly being drained and his PAK seemed to have problems keeping up with the conspicuous, constant blood loss. The metal legs abruptly gave out, causing him to fall back, even if they reacted fast enough to prevent him from crashing on the floor once again. There was no way that he could have moved on his own in those conditions. He was too weak and damaged.

His breath hitched, in both pain and flaring annoyance, and a low growl escaped his throat. He was stuck in enemy territory, completely vulnerable and with no way of knowing if he had any chances of being rescued. His communicator was off and he wasn’t even sure if the recruits stationed outside the building were still alive or if they had been attacked and killed off too. He swallowed. It had been a trap all along, that was obvious by now, so he wouldn’t have been surprised if it had turned out that he was the only, _temporary_ survivor.

His thoughts started to spiral down once again towards whether or not it would have been a good move to just get his spooch out and die, but their mad raging was interrupted by a sudden sound of rustling coming from the hole in the metal wall. He tensed, a new wave of terror surging through him, but his antenna perked up when he heard _voices_ instead of the robots’ heavy metal steps and electronic buzzing.

“What on Irk happened in here?!” The first one exclaimed, high-pitched and coloured with a disturbed hint of panic. “Are they…all dead? And why did _we_ had to come in? We should have sent someone else!”

“What do you think? The same machines that tried to blow us up clearly did a much better job at blowing _them_ up,” a second voice answered. It sounded more openly vexed than scared, but it was clear that half of the annoyance it conveyed was a not-so-successful attempt at disguising anxiety. “Calm down. And keep your voice down. We’re the _tallest_ of the group, and the less injured, so it was up to us.” A small pause and more rustling. “We weren’t prepared for this battle. We lost half of the squad and we didn’t even get what we came to retrieve. The Tallest won’t be pleased.”

There was a long pause, as if none of the two had been left with anything else to say, and then a beeping sound followed.

“Hey, look.” It was the second voice once again. “A life sign. Someone has survived this…mess.”

“Whaaaa?” The first one echoed, incredulity filling his tone. “How’s that possible?! Look at them! They are all… _pulpy_.”

A dismissive scoff echoed in the room and then finally the two seemed to start moving again, following the increasing frequency of whatever device they were using to tract the signal down. The sound of their approaching steps alternated with the creaking of metal being bent until…

“ _Zim_?!” The first voice hissed out, both appalled and openly annoyed. “For the Tallest! Why am I even surprised?! Of course it had to be him! He never dies, no matter what!”

“Shut up. And get his eye instead. There.”

“Why do _I_ have to get it?!”

“Because you have a broken arm, which means that it will be up to _me_ to carry him. He is in no conditions to move on his own.”

“Can’t we just…leave him there and say we found no one?”

“You know we can’t. We were given strict orders. Besides, we need whatever information of the attack his stored in his PAK. So, stop grumbling and do what I said.”

A few mumbled, unhappy words came from the first Irken, which caused the second to growl out under his breath.

“Purple, for the Tallest. Get the eye. _Now_.”

“At times I really _hate_ you, Red.”

Zim tensed when he felt a gloved hand on his shoulder. Red had crouched down next to him and had to have been assessing the state of his wounds, a suspicion that was confirmed a moment later, when the fingers of the taller Irken’s other hand pried his arm away his arm from the hole in his abdomen, prodding the hems before covering it again.

“Zim? Zim? Can you hear me? Can you get up?”

He opened his mouth, but no articulated sound left his lips, so he weakly shook his head. His consciousness was fading in and out, buzzing noise of his PAK becoming stronger and stronger. He wouldn’t have been able to stay awake for much longer. His whole system was pushing to go into a restorative state, now that he knew that he was more or less safe in the hands of his people.

“Oh, come on!” Purple groaned, but his voice sounded muffled and wavering to Zim. “He’s about to switch off! Can’t he wait till we get out?! Next time we’re so sending Skoodge and Tenn. I don’t care if they can’t walk on their own!”

“Shut up. I told you this isn’t the right moment to complain,” was Red’s hissed answer. The hand on his shoulder shook him, but he almost couldn’t feel the movement. “Zim? Zim. _Zim_!”

“ _ZIM_!”

The Invader blinked as reality crushed on him, making his footing uncertain for a moment. His gaze snapped up from where it had fallen on the dirty pavement and he became suddenly aware of the stink of the Earthen air that was surrounding him. The stench of pollution replaced the heavy smell of rotting Irken blood and the sunlight for him a few seconds blinded, as if his eyes had still been expecting to be met with the dim lights of the laboratory. The street was littered with pieces of asphalt and the scraps of his latest device, which had exploded not much time before, marking the failure of his amazing strategy. In the back of his mind, he knew that he needed to have a word with GIR about that mess, but in that moment he couldn’t remember exactly _why_.

Discarding that thought, he looked down at himself, still feeling daze. One of his arms was wrapped around his middle, but, instead of a gaping hole, there was just a tear in his uniform, a burn and a bit of blood. Both his organic shell and his PAK seemed to be fully functional and he wasn’t being wrecked by endless waves of agony. He could feel the itching of the contact lenses in _both_ his eyes and the light weight of the slightly askew wig on the top of his head.

He blinked again, his mind finally catching up with the present. He was on a different cursed alien planet. He was no longer an Elite, but an Invader. He hadn’t been fighting merciless war machines, but his just as ruthless but more harmless human nemesis. All he had experience had been a very vivid, unusual flashback.

His mouth curled into a scowl. He definitely needed to run a full diagnostic as soon as he had got back to his base, because it wasn’t normal for Irkens to get so lost in a _memory_ , of all things, but that was a thought for later.

His eyes slowly moved towards Dib, who was standing a few metres away from him, looking deeply annoyed and a bit weirded out. The same kind of emotions that Zim himself was experiencing in that very moment, even if for different reasons.

“What the…? Did you just zone out in the middle of a _fight_ , space scum?!” The boy exclaimed, irritation and incredulity filling his voice as he threw his hands in the air. “You didn’t hear a single word of what I’ve said in the last five minutes, did you?” Not that it had been anything vital, mostly just _boasting_ about having managed to literally blow up the alien’s plans once again, but that wasn’t the point. How was he supposed to rub his victory in his rival’s green face if the other just tuned him out while he was at it? “Ah, curse you, Zim!”

The Invader made a show of waving a dismissive hand. “Hey, it’s not my fault if you are so _boring_ , Dib-thing. Your insignificant, pointless words are a mere nonsensical background noise to me. Nothing worth of the attention of the Might Zim!” He claimed, pridefully, puffing his chest out. “Whatever threats or promises or idiotic…stuff you have been saying, I have seen and heard and felt worse.”

“What are you even…?” The human’s face contorted in confusion, before the annoyance took over again. “You know what? Never mind. It’s not even worth it.” He shook his head and made to turn around. “I kicked your green ass, again. I _won_. That’s what counts. I’m going home.”

“Yes, yes! Run away from me, Earth monkey! And you may have won the war, but you have not won the…Uh.” He paused for a moment, realising that he had phrased it wrong. However, it wasn’t like he could correct himself, so he went on. “The thing bigger than war! Next time you and your _puny_ planet will have to bow to the uncanny strength and brilliance of _ZIM_!”

“Whatever, alien scum,” Dib shot back in a tone that was totally unimpressed by the threat and by the manic laugh that followed the words, without even bothering to look back at the Irken. “See you tomorrow at Skool.”

“Yeah, yeah. See you tomorrow,” Zim called after the boy, abruptly stopping his cackling when he realised that it wasn’t having the desired effect.

With a scoff, he turned on his heels, heading back in the direction of his base. He had more schemes to cook up and he had to check if the Computer had finished doing the Skool work in his place.

However, he hardly had the time to cover a few metres when he abruptly stopped his tracks again, a thought hitting him as hard as his coming back to the present had. Was _that_ what his life had become? Plans after plans that could have worked but that, for some reason, didn’t. Skirmishes that, no matter how violent and heated they could get, never reached the extent of the battles he had fought in the past. Wounds that healed in the space of an hour most of the times and that never put him in need of a medic or to go into a restorative state. Daily routine made of Skool and TV and shopping and snacking and dealing with GIR’s shenanigans, with no real harsh training to wear him down and leave him aching for hours to no end.

Zim looked down at his gloved hands. How long it had been since he had landed on that ball of dirt? Two Earthen years? Three? Not too long, from an Irken point of view, since it wasn’t even half of a rotation on his planet, but it was still _a lot_ for an Invader. The awareness of the passing time, though, wasn’t what truly disturbed him in that moment. What caused a cold, uncomfortable sensation to rise in the pitch of his spooch was how _familiar_ Earth had become to him.

He swallowed at the thought. He still hated it and its pig inhabitants with his whole being, he still wished to destroy it, he was still confused by half of the things he saw humans doing every day. However, he had adapted to it, much better than he had to any other worlds he had lived on before. Not even on Devastis, where everyone was nothing but an anonymous number, he had come to fit in so _comfortably_. Not even Foodcortia, with its repetitive routine and strict shifts, had lulled himself into such a sense of _normalcy_.

He watched his fists tightening with a feeling that wasn’t real rage, but something much more uncomfortable and that he couldn’t name. He had once been a proud Irken soldier, always rushing to the front line, even if most of the times he had come running back away from it after mere minutes, always ready to overdo, to spill blood and suffer in the name of the Empire and of his Tallest. He still was and did, in a way. He had accepted that secret mission, on an unknown planet full of hidden dangers, after all, and he still bowed and did everything his leaders asked him to, no matter how much harm it brought him. And yet, something was amiss.

His disguised eyes moved upwards and he let his head fall back, against the smooth upper surface of his PAK. The Earth’s sky was blue where Irk’s was pinkish. The gravity was much lighter than it was on his home world. The air tasted different, and not just because of the pollution. That ball of dirt couldn’t have been more dissimilar from the planet he loved and served and belonged to. But then how had it happened? How had he come to feel so at ease _there_ , of all places? Could it be because he was mostly free from the Empire’s rules and expectations, from his Tallest’s demanding and painful tasks, from the scrutinising eyes of his fellow Irkens, from the undeserved judgements and the venom that had been spit in his direction ever since he had been hatched? And if the answer was yes, what was that supposed to _mean_ for him?

His head dropped down once again, as the mysterious feeling in his chest became even bitterer. There were rules and conventions on that foolish planet too, but he didn’t have to care because he was above them, as a superior being. Most humans judged and spited him, but he could move past it with ease because to him they were worth nothing more than the dirt under the sole of his boots. Dib’s words and actions were often cruel and they hurt each other in some fashion almost every day, but it was different, because he knew that the boy saw him, took him seriously, had no doubts on the threat that Zim was, was aware that the Invader could have annihilated his whole race and world, if he had tried hard enough.

Earth was dirty, insignificant and disgusting were Irk was shiny, powerful and worthy, and yet that negligible dump had come, in a way, to gift him more than his home world had ever had. It was a hard admission to make, but at the end of the day it was the ugly truth.

Dropping his loosening fists, the Irken resumed his steps, trying to fight the confusion that those thoughts had left him. It didn’t mean that he would have ever chosen that stinky place over Irk. It didn’t mean that he was less motivated to carry his mission out. It didn’t mean that he would have gone easier on Dib just because the two of them had come to mean so much, in a very twisted, perverse and unhealthy way, to each other. It didn’t mean that he would have ever just thought about…staying and never going back to where he had come from. That long overdue realisation didn’t change anything and he would have gladly forgotten about it as soon as his spooch had calmed down.

As the base came into sight, he gaze locked on the building he had, at times, come to call “home”. Nothing had changed and nothing would have ever changed. However, he decided as he crossed the threshold of the small garden, he could admit, strictly to himself and thinking it _very_ quietly, that _perhaps_ his time on that planet, in spite of everything, hadn’t turned out to be as awful and despicable as he had expected it to be.


End file.
